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Women and Biodiversity meeting in Bonn, Germany

German "Women and Life on Earth" association announces new office and organises meeting on women and biodiversity, March 19 in Bonn

18.03.2010 |Magdalena Black

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Almost seven years after the German non-profit association "Women and Life on Earth e.V.?" (Women in international cooperation for peace, ecology and social justice) was founded in Berlin, the association will dedicate its new office in Bonn.

"We are delighted to be able to use two rooms in the International Women's Center right in central Bonn. Having our own space will allow us to expand our work and offer room for guests, volunteers and interns who want to work on the issues that are so crucial to our future," said Anna Gyorgy, the association's coordinator. The group invites friends and supporters to the dedication of the office on Friday evening, 19 March 2010, from 18:30.



The following day the association, in cooperation with the international Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), will hold a meeting on women and biodiversity. This will involve mainly German women in discussion, through internet phone connections, with some of the international activists featured in the film (produced by WLOE e.V. and WECF)

WLOE and WECF participated in the May 2008 Planet Diversity demonstration, festival and international conference for an agriculture that is local, diverse and free of genetically modified organisms (GMO-free). 
The roundtable discussion will focus on work done since the 2008 Convention on Biological Diversity  and the parallel Planet Diversity ? and discuss plans for future action and educational outreach leading up to the next Convention on Biological Diversity. This UN sponsored international meeting will held in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010. A Planet Diversity meeting is currently being planned by Japanese consumer and farm groups.

Year of Biodiversity
The year 2010 has been declared by the United Nations as the Year of Biological Diversity. The dramatic loss of both biological and cultural diversity now underway is as serious a crisis as climate change, and the two are related, explains Magdalena Black, WECF Project Officer for Sustainable Rural Development. She will represent WECF at the meeting: "Life on earth is disappearing; of 41 thousand monitored species 16 thousand are threatened by extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. We see a dramatic genetic- species- and ecosystem biodiversity loss.
The current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be. The main drivers of this loss are converting natural areas to farming and urban development, introducing invasive alien species, polluting or over-exploiting resources including water and soils and harvesting wild plants and animals at unsustainable levels. Women and our communities are especially affected. Action needs to be taken on local, regional, national and global levels, and we need to understand the critical links between the loss of biodiversity and own lives?

The meetings discussions and conclusions will be presented later on this website. Copies of the DVD "Women from Planet Diversity" are now available in German, English and Spanish subtitled versions, with French and Polish versions nearing completion.

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